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Since he and the Penguins mutually split ways, he is available. Maybe playing with his buddy Brind'Amour would be good for him. We would of course have to make room for him be sending someone down for him or trading a draft pick for someone. What do you think?

He'd be great parking himself in front of the goalie on a PP but virtually worthless otherwise since he has no speed.

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LeClair is definitely not a good fit . We need SPEED and lots of it.Someone to bring scoring threat to the third line like Cullen did last year. In my opinion,other than Staal's vanishing act,this is the key ingredient missing from last year's mix.

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Babchuk and Commie are doing to bad either. Babchuk's shot always goes straight into the goalies glove though. He's gonna get one soon, I can feel it.

His shots always go straight into the goalies glove? Are we watching the same Babchuk? Because the one I know...well, his shots always go pretty much anywhere but on net.

Babchuk has improved by an order of magnitude over the last year, but still has to be considered a "project". I still like the kid -- he's big, mobile and extremely coachable and has the potential to be a star-quality defenseman if he continues to get the kind of ice time he's been getting. Defensively, he rarely makes the same mistake twice -- though I do see him make similar mistakes in different situations. Experience will help him generalize the information he has so he can adapt the do's and don'ts to varying circumstances. And he's still got a wicked heavy shot, though I'd sacrifice some of that power for a touch more accuracy.

Commodore is also vastly improved over last season, but still has some troubling tendencies. The first is to over-commit to a play which gets him out of position. I think that's probably an outgrowth of being over agressive on the puck most of the time, which I'd rather see than errors of passivity. But he needs to be more positionally sound -- then he can take advantage of his agressiveness. The second trouble spot for Commie is his disturbing tendency to take bad penalties. And I'm guessing that in a lot of cases if he corrects the first problem it will go a long way towards correcting the second. Most of said bad penalties are of the holding/hooking/interference variety and are probably created by situations where an attacker got away from him because he played himself out of position. What troubles me most about these tendencies is that Commie's not a second- or third-year player anymore and he should've worked these things out by now. That said, after seeing the improvement in his game over the last season and a half, it might be that he didn't start realizing his potential until he came here to Carolina. Whatever the case, he's been one of our more consistent D-men this year -- at least among the younger guys.

We could still use an offensive defenseman, Kaberle's return notwithstanding. Frankie's return is still a ways off, and even after he comes back it'll take time for him to find his rythym again. But even if he were to come back today 100% in a system like the Canes play, you can't have too many snipers -- especially on the blueline.

But just so I'm not completely O.T. here, I don't see LeClair as a good fit for this team. I'm not even sure he'd have been a good fit when he was young. He's not the fleetest of foot, and I have real reservations about the chemistry issues that might arise. We don't play a Legion of Doom style of game, and that's when LeClair was at his best. We could stand to bulk up a little up front, but not at the expense of the transition game.

I'm not current on who might be available before the mid-year deadline, so I wouldn't know who to suggest going after. It's just a guess, but I doubt we'll see much in the way of activity from Lumpy until after the new year.

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Commodore is also vastly improved over last season, but still has some troubling tendencies. The first is to over-commit to a play which gets him out of position. I think that's probably an outgrowth of being over agressive on the puck most of the time, which I'd rather see than errors of passivity. But he needs to be more positionally sound -- then he can take advantage of his agressiveness. The second trouble spot for Commie is his disturbing tendency to take bad penalties. And I'm guessing that in a lot of cases if he corrects the first problem it will go a long way towards correcting the second. Most of said bad penalties are of the holding/hooking/interference variety and are probably created by situations where an attacker got away from him because he played himself out of position. What troubles me most about these tendencies is that Commie's not a second- or third-year player anymore and he should've worked these things out by now. That said, after seeing the improvement in his game over the last season and a half, it might be that he didn't start realizing his potential until he came here to Carolina. Whatever the case, he's been one of our more consistent D-men this year -- at least among the younger guys.

I agree with your assessment on Commodore and he seems to get out of position by not anticipating correctly and then he doesn't have "catch up" speed.

In his defense (no pun intended) though he may not technically be a 2nd or 3rd year guy but in reality he is when you consider him as a top 6 guy who gets lots of minutes even strength and on the PK. With NJ and Calgary he was a depth d-man which is how he started out last year. So when you think of it like that this is his second year as a "full time" guy and it's hard to imagine at times he's in the top pairing based on how he started out last year.

Then again though Kaberle started the year out as a healthy scratch for a handful of games or so.